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Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” The healing power of sharing my cancer story compelled me to found WWGN. I'm an inspirational speaker, contributor at CURE and Positively Positive, Huffington Post blogger, support volunteer with Cancer Hope Network, member of the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center Oncology Community Advisory Board, patient educator with Pathways Women’s Cancer Teaching Project, wife and mother, and a former very stressed out lawyer.

There's pink on everything, from burly football players to massive fracking drill bits. There's The Singing Mammogram (a do-wop song and dance that starts out with, "Boobs, Boo-Boobs, Boo-Boobs, Ta-Ta-Ta." Check it out here, if you don't believe me.)

When I went to the Susan G. Komen blogger summit in May, I got the impression the ship was being righted and we would see less disgusting and demeaning shenanigans in the name of "awareness" and greater focus on more important things, like research.

I guess I was wrong.

Breast cancer isn't pink and it isn't pretty.

We don't need a song and dance to be "aware."

We're way past awareness.

We want answers.

We want to be able to use words like "cure" and "preventation" in real sentences about real women with real breast cancer. (Notice it's not called "boobies" or "ta-ta" cancer.)

One of those real women is my friend, Lockey Maisonneuve, who I was blessed to join earlier this week on a road trip to Woodstock, NY. A yoga instructor and creator of the Let It Go Workshop, Lockey was there to do a photo shoot with Robert Sturman, world class photographer and artist.

After a rainy session in which Robert got amazingly beautiful yoga shots, Lockey wanted to do something different.

There, in an open field in October, she removed her top to tell her truth about breast cancer.

The image above was taken by me. It was truly moving to photograph the photographer and his subject at such an intense moment. To see Robert's incredible image, make sure to visit his Facebook page.

You can read more about my day with Lockey and Robert, and see another picture of Lockey at my new blog.

I know I just wrote my Pinkwashing - Why I'm Not Buying It piece. But, for the record, this year I really wanted to avoid writing about the usual October storm of pink crap and critcism. It's getting old and so am I, I guess.

Once again, I couldn't not write about what was, for me, a pure statement of truth about breast cancer, this time juxtaposed against the decaying corn stalks of October.

It was the naked truth about breast cancer and I had to share it with you.

It's October and the pink marketeering machine is once again taking advantage of our sincere desire to put an end to breast cancer.

I was blissfully unaware of the hoopla until that moment my cancer pain smashed head on into a pink ribbon festooned six-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade. Rather than try to recreate my anger, I thought I'd share a representation only a 20-year old slam poet could muster.

Criticizing the obscenity of pinkwashing isn't a slam on another survivor's desire to wear pink and run in races. This is about large corporations making money off of our suffering. If you want to fight back, get involved with:

This October, Think Before You Pink® is "taking it further and targeting some of the most outrageous pink ribbon promotions that exemplify everything that’s wrong with pink ribbon culture. We’re calling out the empty awareness, the misinformation, the profiteering, the pinkwashing, the degrading of women, the “tyranny of cheerfulness” that hides the harsh realities of this disease."

Make sure to check out this year's most egregious offenders. (One offender is a company many of of know if we've spent any time working on craft projects with our kids and not one cent of the money they make from selling pink ribbon trinkets goes to breast cancer anything.)

I don't know about you, but I assumed the Susan G. Komen organization authorized all the pink ribbons you see on these products. When I brought that up at my meeting with Komen CEO and President Dr. Judith Salerno at the Blogger Summit I attended this year, she said there was nothing Komen could do about the unscrupulous misappropriation of the ribbon.

There is something we can do. We can get educated and we can educate others.

It's our responsibility to know where our money is going.

Anger is only useful if it results in action.

Survival > Existence,

"I'm Not Buying It" by Justice Hehir of Rutgers University (of which I am a proud alumna.) Justice was nominated for best poet at the competition. The video was uploaded by Lindsey Michelle Williams. Thank you to my daughter, also a Rutgers University student, for bringing the video to my attention.

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“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.” Joseph Campbell

If you've been reading WhereWeGoNow for any length of time, you know that cancer's kick in the rear taught me to say "Yes" to my adventure. In fact, "Say Yes to Yourself" is one of the 10 simple secrets to creating inspired healing, wellness and your joyous life after cancer that I wrote about in How to Build an Amazing Life After Treatment.

I found it deeply spiritual and, ultimately, about the power of bringing "a blissful Yes into your life, one that opens the door to opportunities, abundance, and love."

Written by James and Claudia Azula Altucher, The Power of No makes clear that the ability to say No to what isn't working is the only way to make room in your life for what does work. Accordingly, the writers explore the power of saying No to self-destructive behavior (physical and emotional,) stress, mindless chatter, angers of the past, self-sabotage, being stuck, phony storytelling, scarcity, "bad luck" and people you know aren't good for you.

The conversational style of the book (James and Claudia take turns sharing personal anecdotes) teaches by example. These are people who have been in the trenches with stories to tell. They've made big mistakes in business and love and have found themselves "on the floor." After decades of struggle, each of the authors discovered the power of No and connected with a life of greater health, abundance and happiness.

I recommend this book to anyone going through a life transition or healing journey. We all get stuck sometimes and it always helps to connect with others who have been where you are now. It also helps that each chapter offers concrete exercises to guide the reader to sit, reflect and do the work necessary to unleash the power of No and ultimately find your Yes.

Survival > Existence,

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

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The other morning, I spent some time talking with four young women in the physician assistant program at Seton Hall University. I was there to give them the truth (mine) about what it is like to be a cancer patient.

As a patient educator with the Pathways Women's Cancer Teaching Project, I've met with hundreds of young residents, and medical, nursing and chaplain students. During our sessions, we are interviewed and participants are encouraged to ask us anything and everything about our experience. In this way, we expose them to the patient as a whole person with a family, job, fears and emotions. We've been told by many participants that meeting with us has entirely changed their practice for the better.

Three of the women I spoke with were engaged and asked numerous questions. The fourth was extremely quiet and sat twirling her hair. She appeared to be listening, but wouldn't participate, even when I asked her directly if she had any questions.

After our session with the PA students, the patient educators got together. When it was my turn to talk about my session, I mentioned the young woman twirling her hair. I said I initially thought she wasn't engaged, but a moment of eye contact led me to believe she might have been dealing with a cancer story of her own.

We looked at her feedback form and, sure enough, she had written that a member of her family had breast cancer and she just couldn't talk about it in the group.

How did I know? Something in her eyes sparked a split second of recognition. How many times had I gone out into the world, trying to function normally, when deep down inside I was carrying the red hot ember of cancer worry? What about that time I struggled to hold it together as the tech said amazingly ignorant things to me during my first mammogram after my mastectomy?

And it's not just cancer pain we push down where we think no one can see. One of the most painful experiences of my life happened over 20 years ago when I was a practicing attorney. I was in another attorney's office for a scheduled deposition of his client, a child. My job was to ask questions about the child's accident, but the attorney came out and told me his client wanted to leave early. When I said I would try to be quick, but I had a job to do, he asked me if I had children. When I answered that I didn't he dismissed me with, "Oh, that's why you don't understand."

What he didn't understand was that I am the oldest of nine children, so I certainly get kids. He also didn't understand that I had lost two pregnancies and was battling infertility. As much as his carelessly cruel comment hurt me, I held in my pain and trudged through the deposition.

None of us has to come clean and share anything we don't want to share. We have a right to our privacy and our dignity (there's nothing worse than losing it with people you don't trust to handle it.)

Sometimes it's easy to know when a person needs your kindness. And sometimes it isn't.

But it shouldn't matter.

Part of being human is to experience sorrow, fear, grief and pain.

To be an evolved human is to know it's not just you and to act accordingly, with kindness.

If you relish the joy of holding a real book in your hands, don't miss this amazing stop-motion animation by Sean Ohlenkamp. Let me know if you agree with the statement at the end of this short and immensely delightful video.

If you're on Facebook even a little bit, you've seen video after video of people dumping ice buckets over their heads.

The ALS ice bucket challenge is the internet craze of the summer. The rules are a bit murky, but it appears that once challenged, you have 24 hours to donate to ALS and/or pour ice water over your head. (That's the part I'm not clear on.) Before the chilling moment, which is recorded and posted on Facebook, you challenge three other people (which is how the challenge keeps going and going and going.)

Earlier this month we were on vacation, out of the internet loop and ice bucket challenge clueless. Imagine my surprise when I got home, hopped on Facebook and connected the challenge to the book I just finished reading, Until I Say Good-Bye, My Year of Living with Joy.

Author Susan Spencer-Wendel wrote most of her New York Times bestselling memoir on her iPhone, tapping out each letter with her right thumb. At age 44, she was diagnosed with ALS (more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.) As her muscles slowly withered away, she wrote:

not about illness and despair, but a record of my final wonderful year. A gift to my children so they would understand who I was and learn the way to live after tragedy: With joy. And without fear. If Lou Gehrig could feel lucky, then so could I. So should I.

Living with joy and without fear isn't something I'm especially good at. I'm a worrier. I'm careful. I know what it's like to feel like a sick person. I was drawn to Susan's memoir because I couldn't imagine how someone chooses joy and fearlessness in the face of an inevitable, torturous death. I wanted her to convince me it was possible.

And she did.

Despite her worsening health, Susan committed to creating life-long memories for herself and her loved ones. She took special trips with each of her three children, husband, sister and best friend since middle school. She traveled to the the Yukon Territory to see the Aurora Borealis (dog-sledding included.) She made a pilgrimage to Cyprus to meet the family she never knew (Susan was adopted and never met her deceased, biological father.) She joined her husband on a trip to Budapest, where they spent the early years of their marriage. She swam with dolphins.

As a mother and wife, Susan dedicated herself to providing her family with positive, loving memories to sustain them after she was gone. But, I think it's important to note she took care of herself too and focused on living with joy. While each memory made was a gift to a loved one, it was also a moment to hold dear when the inevitable happened and she became a healthy mind trapped in a lifeless body.

This is a heartbreaking, exquisite, life-affirming memoir. As I read, I was constantly reminded that life is best celebrated in the here and now, mindfully and with awareness. That's where loves lives and where joy finds us.

If Susan Spencer-Wendel "can feel lucky, then so could I. So should I."

Survival > Existence,

PS: I have yet to be ice bucket challenged, and for that I am very grateful. I hate cold. In fact, I'm allergic to it and break out in hives. Really, I'm not even kidding. So, I've already donated to ALS and there will be no video, ever, of me pouring an ice bucket over my head. If you want to donate, you can do so here. If you want to check out Susan's book, find it here. If you've done the ice bucket challenge, I'd love to see it!

PPS: I also learned after reading Susan's book that she died from ALS just a few months ago, on June 4, 2014, at age 47. I love her quote in the New York Times article, “As you know, life ain’t perfect.”

Amen sister!

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